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There is a great need for a ‘one size fits all’ marketing platform, as many marketers struggle to close the loop on campaign ROI, according to a new report.

The annual State of Salesforce study by IBM company Bluewolf examines the thoughts of over 1,700 Salesforce customers from the marketing, IT, service and sales industries.

MarketingTech looked at the marketing section of this year’s report, which examined the “complex” marketer’s tech stack.

Those seeing success are already moving toward an integrated and intelligent core platform, the report said, and there are barriers to stopping marketers from thinking beyond the basics of salesforce; namely disparate apps and bad data.

Indeed, data quality is a recognised issue for 29% of marketers. A further 21% said they can access some data from other departments, and just 19% told researchers they had strong data quality, management and standards in place.

With no single platform to close the gap, marketers are “inundated” with data, the report says, and all the time spent managing separate tools means marketers are prevented from focusing on what they’re paid to do - marketing.

Around 61% of the marketers surveyed said they believed there’s a “significant opportunity” to improve how they use mobile

The report recommends this can be overcome with governance and an improved partnership with IT, but the one-stop-shop platform remains the dream, according to Corinne Sklar, Bluewolf’s global CMO.

“That’s the vision. The more that we can consolidate data across disparate platforms into a single platform, the better it will be for marketers. What marketers really need is the ability to access that data and make them actionable through the channels that they want,” she told MarketingTech.

What exactly are actionable insights?

Of course, allowing marketers to have a complete overview of good quality data means they’ll be able to create actionable insights from them. But this is a phrase much bandied about in today’s marketing minefield - so what exactly does it mean?

“Making insight actionable is the difference between creating insight, such as leveraging predictive capabilities to detect customer attrition, and then orchestrating the response across the business to resolve the issues. One example is submitting a new review to the pricing and contracts team to renegotiate a customer's rebate structure.

“Making insight accessible is focused on how people consume the insights–that the analytics are tailored to that rep and what matters to them. This includes delivery of analytics on mobile phone via Salesforce Wave, a push notification of a predictive alert through Chatter, analytics embedded directly within Salesforce, or the ability to consume any data outside Salesforce, but within Salesforce,” Adam Bataran, Bluewolf’s analytics practice lead said.

Mobile working

Moving away from data, another interesting insight from the report was that of the opportunity around mobile - and not just from a mobile marketing point of view, for a change.

Around 61% of the marketers surveyed said they believed there’s a “significant opportunity” to improve how they use mobile to achieve their goals. In addition, a small amount of sales people said they felt able to run a business from their phone and tablets.

This is something that’s “very important” Sklar told MarketingTech, but shouldn’t be the only area people are looking towards.

“Adapting all technology needs to mobile isn’t the answer because everyone is multi-device. Focus on investing in the employee experience by examining the context of the most important and frequent decisions, then reduce the effort it takes to make them, she said.

Data is ultimately the big issue coming out of this report - a problem perhaps only solved by a one-for-all solution and better quality. But what do you think?

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About the author

Rachael Power writes for TechForge Media, writing about marketing tech, connected cars and virtual reality. She has written for a number of online and print titles including the Irish Times, Irish Examiner, accountingWEB and BusinessZone. Rachael has a passion for digital marketing, journalism, gaming and fitness, and is on Twitter at: @rachpower10.